Brent Bookwalter talks with us about the importance of balancing physical and mental resources to get our workouts just right.
Episode Transcript
Trevor Connor 00:00
Trevor, hello and welcome to fast talk. Your source for the signs of endurance performance. I’m your host. Trevor Connor, here with Coach Julie young, and sitting across from me, just for a minute, is Chris case Howdy, as the famous fairy tale goes Goldilocks. Tried one bed which was too hard, and then another that was too soft. She wasn’t able to sleep until she found the bed that was just right. Training is a lot like the beds we all worry about going too easy, but there’s also such a thing as too much. What we’re trying to find is that just right intensity and the just right amount of work. So the question is, how much is too much? We’ve talked about this question many times on the show, when addressing the impact of too much training over weeks or months, sometimes later, often sooner, you go into a state of overreach or over training, the trick is recognizing the signs when they rear their ugly heads and back down. But a caution we discuss less on the show is on a single day when you’re heading out to do some hit work, how do you know when to say that was enough and ride home easy, content with a solid workout? Why not do one more effort? If it’s in the legs, what’s wrong with limping home to brag about your killer workout? Here to help us answer these questions is mental performance coach and NBC Tour de France commentator Brent buchwalter. Brent will talk with us about the consequences of doing too much, and why personal bests are not the purpose of a good workout. Instead, the focus should be on consistent, incremental progress. We all have a mix of physical and mental resources to draw on, and it’s important to balance them when training that right balance is highly individual. Ultimately, the best indicator of a quality workout may be knowing how you should feel when you’re done. Brent has told us before that sometimes it’s fun to empty the tank, but that’s not the way we should treat most of our workouts. Joining Brent, we’ll also hear from exercise physiologist MOLLY BREWER, author of Zinn and the art of bicycle maintenance, Leonard. Zinn world land speed Rector, John Howard, with friend of the show, Dr Andy Pruitt, both master bike fitters and elite triathlon coach, Jeff sankoff, but before we start this episode, we’re gonna do something we haven’t done in a long time. We have added a title sponsor to the show, which we’re really excited about and we haven’t done in a long time. Because, as you know, we’re very selective. We are very picky about who we will bring onto the show. So I am excited to say training peaks has come on board as our title sponsor, because we have worked closely with training peaks for years, and we are a big fan of their training platform. Yeah. I mean your history with training peaks goes back 25 years. You have a disc somewhere in a closet, maybe the cycling peaks, 1.0 I think I literally have a floppy disk with cycling peaks. That’s what it was called back then. I don’t even know if it would still work on my computer. I would love to install it and see what it was like way back then. But yeah, that became W, K, O, and then they did their online component training peaks, and I have been using it since pretty much day one. Yeah,
Chris Case 03:06
so you’ve seen this evolution, and you’ve seen where it has become much more than just a tool to analyze data or look at data in graphs. It goes far beyond that. Yeah,
Trevor Connor 03:17
there are a lot of good tools out there, particularly analysis tools. But why I have stuck myself with training peaks since the beginning is as a coach, it’s not just graphs, you know, we have said again and again and again on the show. It is about the interaction between the coach and the athlete, the ability to communicate with the the athletes, ability to guide them. And that is something that training peaks has really focused on and understood. So I think it’s actually really appropriate that this is the first episode that they are a title sponsor on, because one of the best things a coach can do is guide an athlete on how to do a workout. And that’s not just upload do this zone for this many minutes. It’s communicating. Here’s right execution, here’s wrong execution, here’s how it should feel. And training peaks is a great tool for that, where coaches can really guide the athlete and tell them when to do more, when to do less, and afterwards, give them that feedback of, yeah, you know, you probably did a little too much here. And what’s really cool is that this tool is not just for cycling workouts. It’s not just for running workouts or swimming workouts or triathlon workouts. It’s now expanded to the weight room and strength training, all sides of training and nutrition as well. And this is where coaches can really give that guidance and help athletes make sure they’re doing it just right. They’ve even added now a virtual training platform, and you can get on that platform with your athletes and go and watch them do a workout and give them that guidance. Live amazing. It’s come a long way. They keep adding to the tools, but at that core is that interaction between the coach and the athlete, and that’s what’s kept me on training peaks. Well,
Chris Case 04:58
it sounds like a lot of coaches out. Who aren’t already taking advantage of this tool should, and we have a special offer for
Trevor Connor 05:05
them, so visit www.trainingpeaks.com/fast talk, and they have a free coach trial. So give it a try and let us know what you think. And with that, get ready to go hard, but not too hard, and let’s make you fast. Well, Brant, I almost feel like I don’t need to say welcome when you come on the show, because you’ve been such a frequent guest and such a great guest on the show, but I’ll still say it, it’s great to have you here. It’s been a little bit so what have you been up to?
Brent Bookwalter 05:34
Thanks. Trevor, always a joy and pleasure to be back with you guys. And yeah, it has been a ride and a journey for coming on the show, but I appreciate the chance to come back. I am staying busy. I guess the biggest headline for me is I’m entering the final semester and phase of this sports psychology master’s degree that I’ve been working on for almost two years now. That’s a big part of my evolution and transition away from racing in the sport and something I’ve definitely thrown myself into this past couple years, and most notably with that, in this final phases of the degrees, I’m actually working with clients, doing mental performance coaching with actual people, which is exciting. I mean, I’ve enjoyed the chance to learn and get in the books and study, but I’m more interested in the applied nature of it, and actually, yeah, working with the people and the performers. So that’s been fun. I’m doing that, and I’m still working with NBC, doing some of the podcasts with them ahead of the Tour de France, chasing our two little kids and trying to keep myself in shape, some riding and running whenever I can, too. So staying busy enough.
Trevor Connor 06:31
That’s fantastic. I know we have the tour coming up. Are you excited for it? Yeah,
Brent Bookwalter 06:35
very got another action packed one, I think, coming up, and there’s so much between now and then. I think all the big contenders for the tour are up against today, for sure, but everyone’s tracking to have this critical mass and big battle in July. So yeah, still a lot to happen between now and then. It’s going to keep me on my toes. But yeah, it’s going to be a great, big July of racing. So
Trevor Connor 06:54
I got to say, the one thing that concerns me now bringing you on the show is there was probably a time when you were like, Oh, these fast talk people. They know what they’re doing, their professional operation. I have to believe, now that you’ve been part of NBC, it is just a whole nother, probably three levels above what we do. What is it like with that sort of production?
Brent Bookwalter 07:12
It’s a privilege and pleasure to be involved with that level of production. I think the best way I can describe it, and what I love about it is it is really a team operation and production, and just like racing the Tour de France as a rider, one of the things I liked the most was this assembling of team, everyone bringing their A game best in the business, all coming together to try to put a performance together. And that’s what it feels like with the NBC team as well, too. It’s a bunch of really high level operating professionals and experts in their field, whether it’s, you know, audio and video production quality, the camera work, the researchers, like the guy standing next to me, Paul Burmeister, who’s a Sports TV professional in and out, just, yeah, professionalism and excellence in teamwork, but still, a lot of fun too. So yeah, I love it. I’ve missed sort of the teamwork aspect leaving professional racing, and I’ve got a little bit of it there, but you guys have that as well too. You guys have a great team, and your guys team is actually involved quite a bit since I started coming on the show as well. So I appreciate the chance to being looped into your crew, too.
Trevor Connor 08:13
No, I really appreciate that. Yeah, no. I mean, that’s one of the things I really appreciate, is just all the great people that we have on the show. LOVE having Julie joining us more and more, so it’s a good team. But yeah, it takes us weeks to put together a one hour episode that’s not live. You guys are doing five, six hours a day live. I just can’t even fathom what it takes to do that. Well, I am going to say you actually were the motivation behind this episode. So of course, you were the first person I reached out to to come and talk more with us about this, because we did an episode A while ago with you where you gave a quote that I have probably said to every single athlete I have ever coached, where we were talking about doing interval work, and you said, Yeah, it’s fun every once in a While to go out and absolutely drain the tank. But that’s not how I like to think about interval work. I like to think about it in terms of weeks to months where you’re putting these fine layers on top of one another. So I never think about it as an individual day. It’s one of my favorite quotes. Actually, out of all the episodes we’ve ever recorded. I thought it was just very perceptive and very wise. So the idea behind this episode is to dive a little more into that understanding of when you go out and do your work for the day, how do you know what is the right amount? When do you know that you’ve gone too hard or that you haven’t done enough. And I’m excited for this conversation because you immediately said when I proposed it to you, it’s not just a how many intervals question. There is a mental side to this. There is a social side to it. So I think we’re going to have a really kind of fun, interesting conversation about, how do you. What’s just right when you go out and do the work? I love
Brent Bookwalter 10:03
- Yeah, it’s a complex debate and discussion. I’m excited to get into it with you and Julie.
Trevor Connor 10:07
So let’s start and I know automatically you’re gonna have a switch for me, but the first thing I wanted to begin with is asking that question, because I think this is the mindset of a lot of very motivated athletes. There’s this notion that harder is better. Is that the case? And I know you don’t like the word hard, so let’s start right there. So you like the word challenge, but address that is more challenging, always better. Or is there a balance?
Brent Bookwalter 10:36
I definitely think it is a balance, and it’s about really, I guess you’re not even balanced as like an end point of achieving perfect balance, but the process and pursuit of it, and I think harder is not always better. I think we like something we hold on to and want to feel is giving our best, giving everything we’ve had, applying our full self, but within that doesn’t always mean more is better. Doesn’t mean more challenging is better, or, you know, harder is better. And you said what I did and apply. And some of our back and forth before this discussion is, I kind of like challenge more. I think, yeah, part of the reason I like to phrase it or think about it as challenges, it really provides more opportunity, really, I think of something as being challenging. There’s an opportunity to meet that challenge, and then there’s dimensions of the challenge, and I can compartmentalize it, or like, I view challenges, kind of like, as a series of toggle switches that I can modulate hard. Just sort of seems like this big, foreboding, all encompassing, cloudy thing that I might just get stuck or lost in.
Trevor Connor 11:43
So I was trying to find a name here, because I’m really embarrassed that I can’t remember this, but you were talking about emptying the tank. And I still remember the most brutal workout I ever did in my life, which was given to me by my coach. I had to do these eight by 12 minute or was it 12 by eight minute intervals in a group of four? And it was myself, Max Plaxton. And then, for the life of me, I can’t remember. It was a Canadian mountain biker who got an Olympic medal in mountain biking, and then a friend of mine who, you wouldn’t know the name, and we did these intervals trying to destroy one another. And I was biking back with my friend after we were done on the bike path, and a woman that had to be in her 60s on a commuter bike past us, and I looked at my friend, and I’m like, should we catch her? And he looks at me and goes, I can’t.
Brent Bookwalter 12:42
Yep. In hindsight, maybe that one was over the threshold of how hard is too hard? You think you found it that was
Trevor Connor 12:47
probably my hardest single day ever on a bike. It was tried to do an impossible workout. Is not the recipe for success. Here’s coach and physiologist MOLLY BREWER talking about how we need to be able to accomplish a workout and focus on gains, not effort.
Mollie Brewer 13:05
I am kind of very passionate about this area. I am in the camp that I believe in doing the minimal possible to get the same or maximal benefit. So I am not a person that prescribes, like going out and beating your time every single time or maximal efforts. I think we kind of need to save those for race days. And athletes don’t need to prove themselves to their coach or themselves every single workout. And if they have to, that can also get in their head. And when you had a hard day at work or school, and then you have to go and try to put out a maximal effort. Sometimes, just like getting the energy to go do something like that can be a barrier to even doing the exercise. So in my research and in the way I coach or talk to athletes about data, I want them to go into a workout being confident that they can accomplish it. And then I’m not asking them as a coach to prove themselves in the workout. And as a coach, I think it’s my responsibility, like I can challenge the athlete, and I can prescribe intervals that push them a little bit, but they should know that I’m never asking them do something that they’re not capable of, and if they can accomplish it, that becomes a conversation of like, what’s going on, whether it’s like stress in their lives, or we’ve done something in training, or maybe it’s just a adverse day, and we can talk about that and kind of make a plan, but I am not a believer in smashing every single workout if you’re going too high or too low, and then you have to Think about it, that this is one workout they’re trying to maximize, but we have a whole week of workouts, and I want them to be able to accomplish the whole progression and not just win the day. And so that’s really important to
Trevor Connor 14:55
- Yeah, going with that is more better. I have frequent. Really had athletes come to me, you know, we put workouts up in our website. They send me emails, or they’re talking with me, and they say, Yeah, I tried that one workout. I didn’t like it. I go, so what was the issue with it? And they went, Well, I could walk away from it. I didn’t feel like I completely destroyed myself, so I didn’t think it was a very good workout. So what’s your response? And I’ll throw this to both of you, what’s your response to that?
Brent Bookwalter 15:27
I relate to it. I had that same discussion with my coach many times, my coaches over the years. Yeah, I think, like, I said, like, there’s this, like, the feeling of accomplishment, pushing ourself, really giving our best. That’s what a lot of us are after. But when we totally lose sight of the greater picture and what we’re trying to accomplish globally, or what we’re trying to build or progress towards, and we get fixated on this almost not even just the process of now, but the outcome. The outcome being how I felt at the end of the session, or what numbers could I put on the board, or, like, how hard could I slam those pedals? There’s process in there, but that is a we’re getting fixated on an outcome, and that can it can be effective at times, but it’s not a as I view it. It’s not a sustainable and consistent way to achieve systematic progression and achieve this larger picture and vision of what we’re after, you know, more fundamentally, globally, long term, moving towards,
Julie Young 16:30
I also think just kind of building on what Brent said. You know, I do think it’s so much about context. And I think as coaches, it’s important to consistently be educating the athletes on why they’re doing what they’re doing, so they can have that purpose and intention in the workouts and clearly understand how that connects to where they want to go and the goals they want to achieve. And then, of course, the athlete needs to really kind of own that too. And I know we all kind of have better days than others where we really bring some great intention into our workouts, but I think it’s kind of that athlete having that discipline. I think you just have to keep reminding yourself of What’s the objective of the workout, and then in that way, I think you can have better discipline in terms of kind of staying in those parameters of the workout as we’re getting ready for this episode, I was thinking about how, like, our culture kind of really feeds this idea of harder and more, you know, if I think about, like, the social media aspect and how, you know, Strava, it’s all about PRs and crowns and this new, like, AI function they have where It encapsulates the ride. It’s always like, rewarding, like, oh, bigger, power, faster, harder. And so it’s like, gosh, when you’re dealing with like, young athletes, new athletes, it sets such a hard precedence to kind of educate against, because that would lead you to believe like, harder, more is the way to go. Like that is the objective. And so think as a coach, you really are up against these kind of environmental cultural forces.
Trevor Connor 18:04
The thing I want to add to this is I’ll stand behind the statement that if you’re going out to do every workout to hit best numbers ever, then you are doing too much most of the time. You know there are times that that happens because you’re just having a really good day when your legs are feeling good and just doing the prescription, you’re going to hit great numbers, but you shouldn’t be hitting your best numbers every day. There’s a purpose to the training. There’s a range that you want to be in, and most of the time, it’s going to be very typical numbers that don’t really unfortunately, if you know that’s what motivates you, that unfortunately aren’t going to really float your boat, but it’s the right intensity, the right amount for that particular workout.
Brent Bookwalter 18:47
Yeah, personal bests are so addictive. Once you get a couple of them, you just want more and more. And that’s a reason why, I think traditionally, for a lot of athletes, across a lot of sports, there’s like this tipping point in the season where you have, like an off season. You have some pre season, and you start building, building, and you have this nice linear path where you are, like, maybe not, you’re doing lifetime PRs, but you’re getting stronger better, and then eventually, like, you get back up to a good level, and then it starts getting, like, kind of Rocky, and you’re like, going up and down, and I’m not improving anymore. And, yeah, it gets complicated real
Trevor Connor 19:19
quick. Okay, I think this is a good place to segue to what I think is a really important conversation to help all our listeners understand the importance of finding that right balance. Let’s talk about what are the consequences of doing too much. So we talk broader term of just too much day to day, you’re just doing too much training. But also, what are the consequences of just going out and doing that interval workout where you absolutely bury yourself, you do more than the description, and you are just limping home, and I guess, start with a place that’s near and dear to my heart, which is the physio. Consequences, and we’ve talked about this on the show before, that when you are getting into high intensity, when you’re getting a threshold or above, you do a lot of what’s called autonomic damage, and our bodies can’t handle that much autonomic damage before they start to shut down. The general rule that they’ve seen in the research is about twice per week is about the most you can handle. Once you start doing three or four or more times per week, you start pushing yourself towards over training. And I think if you’re doing really big workouts, a lot of the same things apply. But I’ll throw it to both of you and Julie, you have all the physiological background. So what are some of the other physiological consequences that we can see of just doing too much in a workout? I
Julie Young 20:46
think it’s kind of what you pointed out Trevor, is this like, kind of this, however you want to look at it, but you know, typically like that, keeping it at about 15% of that high intensity work, and kind of beyond that, it can become detrimental in terms of, as you said, the autonomic nervous system, but also the endocrine and the immune systems. And I think, like, when I’m chatting with athletes or trying to convince them of, you know, again, kind of back to this idea of why, you know, these are things, like, we don’t necessarily feel these things, you know, unlike, Oh, I’m tired, or my muscles are sore, we can, like, quantify in some ways that fatigue, but I think this kind of fatigue, you can’t really feel it until maybe it’s too late. And I think that’s a huge issue, and I kind of always think about it, you know, I think one of our biggest goals in training is that consistency over time, like, that’s essentially what’s going to give us the biggest bang for our buck. It’s not like one big hit a week. It’s like that accumulation day after day. And I think, as a coach, you know, keeping your athlete healthy. You know, no overuse injuries, that sort of thing. So, like, as little as possible missed training days due to illness or injury like, that’s the biggest insurance for an upward trajectory. Like that’s kind of an easy way to get progress. And so I think, you know, trying to explain to athletes kind of these little pieces. I mean, again, it’s hard because it’s something they’re not necessarily feeling or maybe haven’t experienced. And so just kind of putting all those pieces in place for them to help them better understand, again, back to the why.
Brent Bookwalter 22:19
That all echoes my own experience and what I’ve lived productively, but also I’ve lived as you know, failing examples of that. When I was hearing you describe that, Julie, I was thinking how like, as an athlete, often the benefits or the positives, we can like, grab them or feel them, or they’re like quite present, or we can almost, like, touch them, whereas, like, the detriments to performance physiologically that come about from going too hard over training, pushing too much, they’re really like these, almost like silent killers that just sort of like, lurk between, you know, underneath the ground and underneath the surface. And oftentimes we don’t know they’ve been, like manifesting until it’s done a lot of damage. And we do get sick, or we get, you know, yeah, some chronic fatigue syndrome or something further lasting. And that echoes my experience of trying to train for Grand Tours when I was racing, you know, we’re trying to, like, create a lot of fatigue resistance and be able to go day after day after day. But there’s this balance where you do start to do damage to the like you said, the hormonal system, the endocrine system physiological damage that, yeah, it doesn’t manifest moment to moment, day by day in a sore muscle, or, yeah, an extra couple hours of sleep you need. It’s something that’s deeper and underneath the surface. So, yeah, it’s tough. Because as athletes, we like those big hits. We like that big like one and done big smash for the week. But what you described about laying down the accumulation over time and the consistency that goes back to the quote that Trevor pulled out, that I had forgotten, that I had passed off, about those fine layers, laying down those little onion skins over time, and they eventually do add up.
Trevor Connor 23:57
Let’s pause for a moment here from master mechanic Leonard Zinn, about what can happen when we keep going too hard.
Lennard Zinn 24:05
Yeah, if you were one of those lacrosse players, and that one where the you heard about that recently, with the Navy SEAL guy did this training with this college lacrosse team and build them, you remember that, that 24 hour racer, guy from Chris ITA, no, but it was a guy from Australia that was slaughtering Chris Eaton everything. He was like lapping everybody, and they couldn’t believe how. And then right near the end of the race, he just, you know, fell apart. Did he have Rhabdo or something? Yeah, where, you know, he’s consuming his muscles, and he’s got such a high level of protein in a system that it’s like killing his kidneys, yes, and that’s what was happening with these lacrosse players there. There were nothing like, I remember one of them died, but like, a third of them were actually hospitalized, was right? And they lost just. Didn’t have the sense to just say, Hey, I’m not doing this. It was like 300 burpees in a row and some stuff like that.
Chris Case 25:08
Is this what Eddie B would do to you back in the day?
Lennard Zinn 25:10
No, Eddie B. What was great about Eddie B was he really understood about over training? Okay? I mean, that was more, that’s the thing, more of the lesson that we got, I think that’s what I took away from him, was you’re training too much and you’re training
Trevor Connor 25:27
too stupidly. So what would you tell an athlete if they said, Am I going too hard? Like, what would be the things you’d look for if you were advising a young rider right now to know when to say, enough is enough?
Lennard Zinn 25:40
One really good indicator is humor. They just don’t laugh at stuff. And we’ve had young riders stay with us, you know, who people needed to put them up, and they were living in Boulder and, you know, I’d go on a ride with, Hey, why don’t we go on a ride? And we go on Boulder Creek bike path, you know, out to somewhere, and then we meet up with other people, do a ride and come back and they’d be all pissed off afterward because we spent so much time on the bike ride and on the bike path, they couldn’t maintain the whatever goal that their online coach had told them they were supposed to have for this particular workout. And like, Are you kidding me? You know, the reason you started bike riding was because it was fun, and here you’ve completely taken the fun out of it, and that is why everybody does the sport that they’re in when they started, was for the fun. And if you don’t see the fun in it, that’s the first indication I think you’d look for.
Suzy Sanchez 26:31
Hi listeners. This is Susie Sanchez from USA. Cycling for over a decade, fast talk podcast has brought the most interesting experts from the world of endurance sports into a conversation about your training, if you like, what you hear on fast talk, what about becoming a certified coach? USA Cycling offers courses for new coaches, produced with expert help from fast talk labs. Learn about becoming a certified coach at USA cycling.org backslash coaches.
Trevor Connor 26:58
Something else I’ll add to this. You know, one of the most interesting studies I think I ever read about how to execute training, looked at what are the benefits of increasing number of sets. So in this study, they had multiple groups of athletes. They were all doing the same workout, but one group of athletes just did a single set, another group of athletes did three sets, and another group of athletes did six sets, and they had them do this for six weeks, and what they saw was the athletes that just did a single set of the workout saw 80% of the gains that the group that did six sets saw. So yes, the group that did six sets saw the greatest gains, but you also saw a lot of fatigue, a lot of issues in them, because they were really beating themselves up. And the group that did three sets, they were basically like 95 96% of the same gains. So it was basically with each successive set you saw less gains. And so I talked a little bit about that autonomic stress that’s very damaging to your body, and it’s something that’s additive, but with each set, the adaptive signal, that signal goes in your body and says, Let’s do the work to enhance your muscles, to enhance your body, to adapt to this training, becomes less and less with each additional set. So there’s a certain point where you’re getting very little extra adaptive signal, but you’re just accumulating a ton of autonomic stress. And another thing that I saw in a different study looked at reactive oxygen species. So this is oxidative stress, is something you produce when you train and they’ve shown a little bit of ROS helps adaptations. If you produce too much Ros, which you’re going to do in that six sets, then you start getting immunosuppression, then you start getting fatigue, you start pushing yourself in the wrong direction. So what I’ve seen physiologically is it doesn’t take a lot of sets to get most of the gains and to avoid a lot of those negative consequences. And it’s surprisingly little. Everybody thinks, oh, at least I gotta at least do three sets, maybe four or five, actually getting most of it with one. And I’ve experienced that myself. I have this AFib issue. I go out and do two workouts a week, but often I get through one set before I go into AFib and I have to call today, and I’ve been shocked how much I’m still seeing almost the same gains I saw before. Doesn’t take a lot. And Brent, I see you nodding your head,
Brent Bookwalter 29:28
yeah, I’m thinking of my own personal self as a case study as now I’m not training professionally, very far from it. I’ve been running more. I’ve been trying to be a bit of an inspiring trail runner, and I’m like, chuckling and relating to this firsthand, because I’m like, making these same mistakes that we’re talking about. Like, if I’m only going to get to run for an hour, I want to go out and feel like I did something. I want to, like, breathe hard and like feel I want to be able to sit back down at the desk and feel like my muscles were. Worked. And so I’m like chuckling how I’m like, making the same mistake that we’re talking about. But then I’m also thinking what, you know, we’re going to cover the more the mental side later. But whether it’s physical or mental, we’re kind of centering on the physiology. Now there is this situation of difficulty, challenge, how hard it is relative towards the resources we have to meet that challenge. And the reality is now for me, when I’m meeting this challenge of these workouts or these runs that I’m doing, I am like my recovery is garbage compared to what it was as a pro. I’m not sleeping as much, I’m not eating as well. I’m on my feet way more. I’m chasing our little kids around. So I think that has to be like mentioned and considered in this physiological situation and impact as well, is like when we have more resources to give and we have a more like healthy, supportive training environment, whether that’s a coach or lifestyle at home, you know, getting a massage, sleeping really good, that all also adds up and contributes to What we can pile on and answer in a healthy way.
Julie Young 31:03
I think also kind of along those lines, Brent, it’s resources, but it’s also kind of controlling your environment. And I think, you know, sometimes I feel like masters athletes or young student athletes have it way harder than pro athletes. And I know that’s kind of a reach, but I feel like the life is so uncontrolled, and you know, all the stressors that they’re dealing with aren’t neatly siloed, but they all blend, you know. And I just think it’s important for people to understand, like, we’re not robots, that you know, how these stressors influence how you feel physically. And as you pointed out, they all kind of pile up. So I also think it’s not only the resources, but also how well you can control life, which we know you can’t in those kind of situations, like you just described your life. Everything’s finite, and can’t really control how well you sleep, or necessarily eating just so or hydrating just perfectly. So think there’s that side of it too.
Brent Bookwalter 31:57
Yeah. And I guess when I say that, I’m also like chuckling about myself, like, there is a bit of a I don’t think the math is concrete and it’s smooth and it’s guaranteed. It’s not like, oh, I can do the three more intervals and like, or I can, like, chase my buddies in the three final efforts and, like, bury myself to the line. If I make sure I eat a bunch of carbs after my ride. It’s like, there’s not, like, this direct equation, but there is some sense of like, well, if I’m gonna give some more here, I gotta, like, take some more here. That is what you I think what you’re just describing, Julie, is like, how we’re organizing our life, how we’re prioritizing what we have available to us. So,
Trevor Connor 32:36
Brett, this goes to a study that you sent us last week, which was a really great read, and I’m assuming that came from your program that talked about the importance of balancing demand and resources in athletes, and when the resources can’t match up to the demands, that’s when you start seeing fatigue and even over training. But the thing I thought was really fascinating in the study is they said there are different types of demand and resources. So, you know, we autumn, a lot of us automatically think, oh, demand is, how hard is the workout and resources is, as you said, Are you getting enough food? Are you getting massage, things like that. That’s the physiological demands and resources. But then they said, there’s also mental demands and resources. So if you had a really bad day at work and you go out and try to do intervals, you might be eating enough carbohydrates, but you might not have the mental resources for that activity. And they showed that if you aren’t starting to remember what was the third category of was physiological, mental and was cognitive, wasn’t
Brent Bookwalter 33:39
it? Yeah, physical, cognitive and emotional resources, I believe,
Trevor Connor 33:43
yeah, but you have to consider all three of those. And often we think about making sure we have the physical resources. But you can also push yourself to fatigue if you don’t have the cognitive and emotional resources at the time.
Brent Bookwalter 33:55
Absolutely. And Trevor that actually that like sparks this memory I have of I think the last time I was on the show with you guys. I was with Dr Scott fry, and we were talking about some other mental, more cognitive aspects of performance. Scott being a neuroscience expert, and I’ve been able to get to know Him more and collaborate with him on some efforts. And that’s echoed in the neuroscience, the brain science that he’s been at the forefront of in his research and his academic career, and the app, the sort of the applied application version of that is what you just described, of the cognitive load at work. It manifests in these, you know, being on our phones all the time and playing video games and doing social media and that sort of backs some of his protocol that he’s he does with his athletes, where he will limit them, restrict them, actually peel away some of this extra cognitive burden and load. So there are more of those resources available to meet these challenges. Julie, I see you smiling. I just love that,
Julie Young 34:49
Brent, because I do feel like we forget, like we love all our technology yet, and I think we’re getting talking about pendulum swinging. But, you know, I think people are becoming a little bit more aware. That it’s not always 100% positive, that taking it out of life can kind of give you clarity and simplify things, and probably give you more energy and other aspects of your life.
Trevor Connor 35:11
I think this is actually a really good segue into the now let’s talk about what we can do. So I think what we’ve established here is this disconnect between demand and resources, and really what you’re capable of doing with the work, you know, what is right amount versus too hard is finding that balance making sure the resources match up with the demands.
Brent Bookwalter 35:35
Yeah, Trevor, one of the things that I had written down based on our a couple little pre pod discussion we had was this idea of being honest and having clarity on how we should feel at the end of the session. And this is something I went back and forth with, a lot with my coaches in my career. They would or somewhere I considered more coaches. Some were just trainers, kind of prescribing workouts. But the numbers, the training philosophy, the data metrics, the periodization. That’s all well and good, but even more helpful than that, in most cases, was an idea of this is how we want you to be feeling at the end of this session. So you could rate it on a scale of one to 10, one to five. Totally dead, totally fresh. You know, some articulating our own way of communicating what state I want to arrive at the end of that session, so it builds, prepares and lifts us forward to the subsequent sessions after that. So you had that, I think in your notes, I just wanted to make sure we hit that because that was such a big, personal, lived experience of value for me. But at the end of the day, you can’t overvalue the importance of getting clarity on how we want to end up at the end of a particular session. So if it is actually I want you on your hands and knees and looking the floor and not able to get up, okay, like, let’s get clarity on that. But that’s rarely the case.
Trevor Connor 36:57
So let’s start with, I think you touched on something that’s really important, which is, what is the goal the session? I think that’s what you’re getting at with you know, here’s what we want you to feel at the end of a workout. Is that the starting point is that where an athlete is going to help themselves make sure they are getting the workout just right, is saying, Here’s what I want to accomplish with this workout, here’s the goal, here’s how I should feel at the end.
Brent Bookwalter 37:25
Yeah, I think it starts there. Not everyone has a coach. For those athletes out there that do have a coach that is absolutely, there’s absolutely a role for that, and even for athletes who don’t have a coach that are self coached, I think that’s a conversation and a clarity that is best achieved prior. Julie, how do you communicate that and work with your athletes in that way, making sure everyone’s on the same page and that’s communicated and understood? Yeah,
Julie Young 37:50
I think kind of, again, goes back to like, that idea of context, and just helping athletes understand, like the what the year looks like, and kind of the objectives of each part of the year, and again, how that is all connecting towards the goals they want to reach. I do think, like, I think early season, you know, like, maybe you’re doing a lot of strength and kind of base and, you know, that’s even hard, right? Kind of keeping people in that endurance zone and then helping them understand the value of that and the importance of that. And just, you know, maybe you get in the weeds a little bit in the science, but you know, kind of always, for me, it’s always educating and connecting the dots for the athlete. So again, they bring that good purpose, that, as you said, clarity, that intention, to the workouts. I feel like that’s a good way to help the athlete kind of develop that discipline, that self discipline for themselves can only be there so much. But I think I don’t know for me, Brent and Trevor, like, I mean, I data. We’re lucky, right? We’re kind of in this era where we have all the disability to really make training so scientific. But I still feel like not losing sight of that perceived exertion, and really having those days where athletes completely divorce from the data and they’re just focusing on actions that make them a better rider, or, you know, they’re out, you know, doing mountain biking, they’re focused on the technical aspects. Or they’re just loving riding their bikes, like, getting back in touch with like, Why did I start doing this in the first place?
Trevor Connor 39:18
I will echo that that when I work with athletes, and this was something that I think we’ll get into a little more in a minute, understanding the workout and understanding the purpose of the workout is so important, and expressing to the athlete what they’re trying to accomplish there. So for example, if I have an athlete do threshold work? So right around that FTP number, you know, I think about what Dr Seiler said, which is this type of work is not about hurting as much as you can. And I love having the conversation with athletes, where I say, Go, do you know, five minute intervals, or eight minute intervals or 10 minute intervals at FTP, and they come back? Absolutely destroyed. And I go, Well, you’re supposed to do these at FTP. And they go, I was and I went, I’ll go, well, so how long was the interval? And they go, Oh, eight minutes. How’d you do on the interval? I barely got through it. What’s the definition of FTP? Well, it’s what you can hold for an hour. Do you see the contradiction there? So it’s, you know, with those sorts of workouts. It’s, it shouldn’t be as hard as you can go. It should be uncomfortable, but not really hard. But it’s more about accumulating time, where, when I give an athlete that super high intensity work that you need to, in my opinion, to help you deal with how a race is going to feel when somebody is attacking. It’s not so much about accumulating as much time as possible. It’s I want you to go out and do these efforts as hard as you can. So this is where those efforts are going to hurt. But we don’t need a ton of them. We just need you to have that experience of this is what really hard feels like. But I always tell my athletes, you know, I want you finishing a workout always feeling like you could do a little more. You could do another set. Do
Brent Bookwalter 41:04
they ever get to empty the tank? Everyone saw they have some fun. Julie, I love what you said about just I mean, going back to the why, I mean, I’m fully on board the mental side, the meaning and purpose and the values orientation of a performance, which is part of this mental performance coaching, but it shows through and manifests in this physiological discussion as well. And on that note, of having clarity on the why you’re going out, how you want to be feeling after the reality for some is why they’re doing it is to like just as a therapy mechanism, to just like, clear out from the day, or to just reset, or to like, be an outlet, or to like, get social from a group ride, and that’s okay, and that’s good. And for some people, that’s all it is, and that’s all it needs to be. For some people, it’s a trade off. It is that sometimes, and I think what’s just important to accept, and what a coach helps with, is like, Okay, well, you can do that. If that’s why you’re going to conduct yourself or execute a ride in this way, that’s fine, but that means what it’s not then is also these other five or 10 or 20 things, and just that, that clarity and the honesty of like at the end of the day, whether you’re a professional, whether you’re someone who never races at all, you have the choice of what you are going to do out on the road, and being empowered by that autonomy and that choice and really making the most of that.
Julie Young 42:27
A young rider, a coach, and he doesn’t love to train at all, like he just loves to race, you know? And he’s just, he cracks me up, but it’s just kind of explaining like, like he just wants to have these big hits like enemies, Strava King and social media, whatever, and anyway, just kind of explain, hey, that’s fine. There’s but there’s trade offs right? There’s, you know, like, probably you’re gonna have to have more rest going into more rest on the other side. So I always feel like it really is kind of important too, just to always bring the athlete into the decision making in some respects, you know, like you have like these principles in the system that essentially guide it, but letting them know at the end of the day, it’s really about how they’re adjusting to it and their feedback, and then also just Yeah, decisions like, hey, what do you think would be better for you today? Do you think this would be better? Do you think that would be better? Or, you know, kind of help, like, bring them into the decision making in terms of into races and tapering and that sort of thing. I mean, I so vividly remember, like, my first year on the national team, and I would like was sent that training plan, and I did it to a T and I was exhausted. I was like, I remember being out raking leaves one winter and just being brought to tears because I was so tired and but yet, you know, I wasn’t going to tell the national team coach, because that’s like, I didn’t have a coach at that time, so I wasn’t going to be forth, like forthcoming, because you want to say, yeah, I totally did it. So I think that’s such an important part of this kind of conversation, of understanding what’s too hard. And obviously every athlete, emotionally and physically, is going to have a different tolerance, so it’s really understanding each and every athlete
Brent Bookwalter 44:06
Absolutely. Yeah, and Trevor, I think I don’t know if it was the same article that you referenced earlier or another one that I sent you, but one of them referenced the importance of the role of the coach in that regards to that feedback and how even this particular article was even considering differences in like, generational, sort of like cultural differences. Is it like, sort of blank, obviously, like, the rule number one of coaching is like, hugely individual, hugely context specific, but like, are there some like generalizations across generations, like, do Gen Z athletes need to be complimented, encouraged, yeah, like, pushed along a little more than prior generations or and the same goes for Culturally, like my teammates, I had that were, you know, from East Germany versus a French rider, or a Scandinavian and a region teammate versus a Canadian? Like, there’s a difference. In the in that feedback that the coach has to offer, and there’s a huge role in that, in this discussion of like is what is too hard, that feedback that is individualized and context specific from the
Trevor Connor 45:10
coach? Yeah, that was something I actually really enjoyed. You’re right. That was in the you sent us two studies, and we’ll put both of them in the show notes, because they’re good studies. And I can’t remember which one it was, but it talked about that need to communicate differently. And it was kind of an eye opener for me, because, like they said, with Gen Z, you got to compliment a lot. You got to be careful about getting too hard on them, because they do struggle more with that, you know, versus, I don’t know what you are like with me. You wanted to motivate me. You start calling me names, get me angry. That got me going. But you have to know the athlete. It could be hard to know when it’s too much for you individually. But here’s legends John Howard and Dr Andy Pruitt talking about ways you can tell when You’ve overdone it.
John Howard 45:59
Well, I think you have to monitor recovery. That’s the catalyst that makes the workout click. And if, according to your formula, and it is very much personal, you’re not recovering after a day, if your heart rate hasn’t returned to a normal level, and it’s still beating faster than it should. You are pushing your envelope over the top. I think I base it entirely on blood pressure and heart rate, both of which need to be monitored on a regular basis, so you can certainly overdo it. I couldn’t agree more with those metrics. I also think most of us have a canary in the coal mine, something, whether it’s an iliotibial band Bursa, or some other physical issue that begins to share its ugly head. If you’ve gone too far, your heart rate’s staying down, your HRV is staying up all those new and old metrics. But is there a little patellar tendonitis, or is there something that lays dormant, like a canary in the coal mine that just finally rears its ugly head, if you’ve pushed it too far, when I was pushing myself to the absolute limit in Kailua, Kona, Hawaii, right before the Iron Man, I got over there a couple of weeks in advance to get acclimatized, and I broke down. I had a patella issue that was really problematic. And then the foot started to swell, and oh my god, I had so much cortisone shot into my foot, and I had to have it because I was, it was just a few days before the race, and it got me through it, but I couldn’t walk again for poo. I mean, I could walk, but I couldn’t run for about three months after that. So you know, what’s it worth? Yeah, you got to do what you got to do to get through the event. But breakdown is a horrible thing, and it can occur, and then it can knock you out for good. So you just have to again. Body work is an important part of that, and the older you get, the more attention you need to pay to the body.
Chris Case 48:18
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Trevor Connor 48:43
So I’ve got a question for you. And yeah, you brought up the important point of individuality, but if you’re coaching an athlete, how would you communicate to them how to do an interval workout to make sure that they got it right, that they didn’t do too much, but they also didn’t do too little. Yeah, that
Brent Bookwalter 49:04
is like, the intersection of like, of the science and then like the artful application. I think, once again, like this is so tough, because I don’t think there’s any like, black and white. Like, this has to happen, or this can’t happen. As we’ve been saying, it’s this greater, global picture. What are we working towards? Where are we at now? What resources do we have available to meet this challenge? And then let’s go and then also, like, how that reference point too, of what, how do we want to feel at the end of this workout? One of the things that I started doing more as I like, sort of like, recognized later in my career, I started switching coaches a little more as I did finally change teams, and that was really hard on me. And I forget a peer or another coach or old, retired teammate. I forget who it was told me, like, you’ve been doing this a long time, like, you know, like, be empowered by your experience. Like, you know how to do this. That’s not going to be the case for. For a new athlete who’s the first time training with a coach, they’re not going to know it is going to be uncharted territory, and part of growing and developing and growing together with a coach is figuring that out. But every every workout we complete, every training cycle we do, that is adding up to inform us, to educate us on how our bodies feel, how we respond and how it’s fitting into the bigger picture. And whether you have one workout experience or 20 years of experience, you can be empowered by that experience. You’ve had to make the decisions that are going to land you in that target zone of how we want to feel and what we want to achieve or accomplish. And then back to the why of we’re doing it in the first place. That’s not really good at answering your question of how I would explain this to an athlete, but I’m writing some training programs these days, here and there, but I’m not writing many, so I’ll send them to you guys, Trevor and Julie,
Trevor Connor 50:54
that’s still a good answer, but Julie, I’m going to throw the same question at you.
Julie Young 50:59
Yeah, I think as much as I kind of can complain about data. I mean, it’s still, it’s a luxury, I think, as a cyclist, that we have the ability to work with power and but I think it’s just kind of keeping it in perspective. So I do think like that is a really good starting point, especially for young, not young, but new riders, where they may not be as in tuned with like that perceived exertion. I do see this in the lab, like, when I do lactate threshold testing, and I see, like, have a new athlete, and we start off and it’s like, they’re already just seven, you know? Or there’s like, oh gosh, where are we going to go from here? But then you work with those really seasoned athletes, and they’re like, right on, like, their seven is their threshold. Like, it’s amazing how in tune they are with their bodies. So I do think initially, like, it really is valuable to kind of use the power numbers as kind of training wheels. So like, Okay, I’m gonna go do a sub threshold workout and but I’m not a fan of, like, an athlete just staring at that device and just like, chasing the numbers to, like, the whole workout becomes about staying in that zone. Like, I’m like, Hey, like, get in there. And then, like, focus on the rhythm, focus on fluidity, focus on breathing, you know, posture, like, I love for them to be, you know, thinking of other things, and every so often, periodically looking at that power number to kind of make sure, oh yeah, I’m there. And kind of, as we had said earlier, you know, perhaps in these intervals, they’re, you know, visualizing race situations. So to me, like, that’s kind of how I like to use, like, the data is just, it’s just kind of periodically glancing at it. But I prefer that they’re more, kind of thinking, more productive things while they’re doing the interval.
Trevor Connor 52:33
So I mentioned this earlier and said, we’ll dive a little more into it. You’ve already heard my opinion, but we brought up the importance of how you should feel at the end of a workout to know that you’ve done the right amount. So let’s dive into these different types of workouts, and I’ve just broken it into four categories. There’s that, let’s call it hit, work that short, high intensity, at VO two, Max or higher type intensity. There’s that threshold work right around FTP, there’s sprint work, and then there’s endurance work. So Brent, I’ll throw it to you first, these different types of work. What do you generally set as the goal, and how should you be feeling at the end of each of these to be able to say, Yeah, I got that one just right?
Brent Bookwalter 53:20
Yeah. Trevor, this is a good question, and this is making me reflect not just what I would preach now, but what I practiced as I was training professionally, and even as I’m training now for different goals than I had before. But I think that it’s important to point out that going back to this assessment of like, why we’re doing a workout, how we want to feel at the end this coach communication, I do expect that I will feel different at the end of an endurance workout versus a threshold workout. So at the end of an endurance day, if I’m getting to the last 30 minutes of that ride, and I’m like, shaking out my legs, and my legs are really sore, and my power is just dropping and my heart rate’s going up, it’s like somewhere in there was that line I crossed. It like, how do we know when it’s hard, too hard, when it’s challenging, too challenging. I made that endurance ride too challenging. And then, similarly, with the high intensity interval training work or threshold work, if there are times again, like, individuality contexts are gonna rule the game here. But in general, as you pointed out in your backing me up with what you said about working with your athletes, you genuinely want to be able to do more if you can’t, especially with threshold, maybe a little bit difference, like when I was doing vo two work, there are definitely some productive vo two sessions where that last one was about, I probably couldn’t do one more, but I’m still, like, recovering from that effort. I’m still riding home. I’m still, I’m not walking dead getting home, which is not always the case when we go to these one and done big hit out traffic challenge, you know, rides, there’s, you know, all these notorious Girona stories of guys. Slamming these iconic climbs are outside Girona and then having like, a two hour, you know, powwow at the gas station 30 minutes from Girona, because they’re just totally wrecked. So, yeah, that’s a sign that that interval session, or that threshold session was too hard if I literally can’t make it home from it. But different than the endurance session, it’s like, I am pushing closer to, like, can’t I can’t keep doing this all day. Man, like, if the prescribed effort was six intervals, if I can do four more after the six, they probably weren’t hard enough. If I can’t even finish the fourth one, and I’m trying to do six, probably too hard.
Julie Young 55:33
I think Brent nailed it. I would say the only thing just keeping tabs on is it too hard. And if, like, you’re in an interval session. You’re just laboring. You can’t hit the power you’re breathing super hard. Heart rate’s really high, or heart rate’s really low. You know, may not be the best day to keep going with it.
Trevor Connor 55:51
Good addition, good point. So it’s the doing, the assessment of yourself before you even start the workout.
Julie Young 55:56
Yeah, I always think it’s good to kind of pedal a little bit, because you know how you can wake up and feel like, oh, gosh, I’m just I’m not here today. But then you start peddling. You’re like, wow, it comes around, and you do the first interval like, Oh, I’m feeling way better than I thought. But then there’s some days where it’s just doesn’t it’s not happening.
Brent Bookwalter 56:12
I think we’re gonna move on to some of the mental aspects of it, but that’s almost like a nice transition over to it, because if we’re gonna talk, have this discussion about what is too hard, what is too challenging. There is an element of motivation and purpose that’s at play and focus. And I think what you just described, Julie, is an application of that. And like giving yourself a chance to like, find more motivation, or to like, redirect your focus out on the bike, and give yourself a chance to do that, and also like to not be too fixated on the outcome of the particular session, and recognizing that is this is one, one data point on your performance, progression journey. It’s not the end all be all, and it doesn’t mean anything for your self worth, your identity, your confidence, although that is so much easier said than done. It’s easy to say, it’s really hard to feel.
Julie Young 57:06
I know for me, this may be the wrong place to say this, but I just was thinking we talked about context and talked about individuality and just understanding your athletes, and understanding like psychology and how, you know, we said that some have higher mental, physical, mental, emotional, physical tolerance, you know, in some lower. And so I always feel like too it’s like, when an athlete contacts you, but that has that really high tolerance, and they’re like, they’re the ones you always need to reign back and they call and or text. And so it’s like, oh my gosh, I’m totally struggling. Then it makes you really think twice about it, like, what’s going on? You know, Are they sick? What’s happening? You know, that really puts question in my mind, do you push through it? But then, on the other hand, like the athletes that, in some ways, like training so tricky, because it has this weird, like it is fatiguing, but yet, they’re kind of scared of being having that feeling of fatigue. And I think you kind of have to consider like, oh, it’s, you know, maybe that athlete needs a little nudging, like, hey, just go do it. You know, kind of to your point. This is an identity. Just go do it. And, you know, I think too, like, you’re going to wake up on race days sometimes and feel lousy, but you just have to buck up and do it. So I always think there’s, again, this context and involved in the decision making,
Trevor Connor 58:22
so you shifted over to the mindset side. And I think that’s where I really want to finish out. Let’s talk a little bit about the right mindset to help make sure that you are doing your work right and you’re getting the most out of it.
Brent Bookwalter 58:37
The mental side of this equation, I think we’ve done well to sneak a lot in there, and for good reason, because it’s never only physical or it’s never only mental, it’s always tied together all the time. But I think, like we touched on it early in this conversation, but this idea of, you know, wanting something to be difficult, wanting it to be challenging consistently, and wanting it to be like, be able to say it’s hard and do hard things like we, like a lot of us as humans, we like something challenging, and we want the idea, we like this idea of giving our best and giving everything that we have and applying our full selves. But there’s a line in there of attaching our identity and our confidence and even our self worth to what we’ve recently accomplished in that regard, that’s where it gets tricky, and that’s where it’s important to take a step back and understand that your self worth, your confidence, is productively built on more than just this recent workout or this current workout of hitting it as hard as we can, crushing it as hard as we can, And keeping pushing in terms of going back to this. We talked a bit, a little bit about how we should approach a workout, the role in the coach communication, the coach athlete relationship. But I think without, like, recite a huge long list, there are a number of things that I sort of naturally default to as we approach a workout. We talked about coming out the other side. How do we want. Feel on the other end. And I think with that, it’s like before, mentally, when we’re approaching it strategically with our coach, what are we trying to accomplish? How does it fit into the larger goals, journeys, journey or objectives that we have that we’re working towards? What strengths am I bringing to meet this particular challenge of this workout. I think that’s really important to check up on, too. And that kind of frames like an intention, as Julie was saying, too, of like, what am I bringing? What am I good at? What tools do I have in my arsenal that I’m gonna pull out for this workout? And then also, like this idea of having this process focus no matter how hard it is, like, what process during this workout is in our control that we can focus on. And then a couple more are like, we talked about resources being aligned with level of challenge, what we’re striving to accomplish, I think, kind of this inventorying of like, what resources do I have available? How do these meet the challenge? Is there a deficiency? Is there a gap? Is there a way I can go grab more of those resources? Now and then? Really, like, as Julie also pointed out this, like, I think she was talking about it more interval to interval. Like, visualizing what how an interval connects with a race, but even before the workout begins, like, what does this look like and feel like in action, and not being surprised by it, when you throw your foot over the top tube and you clip in for the first time, and you go, what does it look and feel like as we head out?
Trevor Connor 1:01:27
What else can a coach do to help an athlete along the way with these workouts, to help them with the making sure they’re in the right mindset? Is it really just come down to everything you just said, or is there more that a coach can do?
Brent Bookwalter 1:01:40
Yeah, I think honestly, I mean, one of the biggest things a coach can do is getting to know the person as much as the athlete. And I think there’s physiological application to this, and there’s also psychological application to this. But athletes are people, whether it’s a purely mental side of performance that we’re working on with mental strategies, or it’s a physiological interval that’s prescribed. There’s a strong connection there to the person centered approach, really like an inside out approach of like building performance, approaching workouts, approaching interval sessions, in a way that comes from within the qualities and character that we are, the why, the values that we bring, and the reason that we’re doing it as much as the technical data driven numbers that we all love too.
Trevor Connor 1:02:25
Here’s Jeff San the two things that he looks for as a coach,
Jeff Sankoff 1:02:32
two ways. Number one, they tell me. Some of my athletes will tell me it’s always too hard, and I know over time not to take them seriously, but most of my athletes, if they tell me that was just too hard, I will take them seriously. The other way is to see what happens the next day. If they have a workout the next day that is a medium type effort workout and they’re just unable to complete it, then I know that the workout the previous day was too hard.
Trevor Connor 1:03:02
Well, guys, thanks for the conversation. Brent, I really appreciate what you actually brought to it, because when we originally started this episode, it was really just a focus on what’s the right intensity. How many sets do you do? And we covered that, but you address there’s such an important side to consider it with the mindset and making sure that resources match the demands. I think it’s become a much more sophisticated and much more interesting conversation. So thanks for bringing all the it was truly appreciated.
Brent Bookwalter 1:03:33
Happy to contribute that and with everything I said too, like without beating the dead horse, recognizing that the physical and mental aspects of all this are so tied together. So all the respect and appreciation for considering the physiological perspectives of it too, and happy to have the mental part of that fit within there.
Trevor Connor 1:03:50
Fantastic. Well, to wrap it up, we do have a question for the forum, so please go to fasttalklabs.com I think it’s forums.fasttalklabs.com this will be up there and give us your answers. But the question is, What approach do you use when you do your workout to make sure you’re getting what you need without overdoing it? So how do you find that just right? And with that, both of you are very familiar with how we finish out the show. This is our one minute take home. What’s the most important or salient thing for our listeners to get from the show? So Brent, we’ll start with you
Brent Bookwalter 1:04:29
one minute. You guys always push me to condense it down. So I’m such a long winded speaker,
Trevor Connor 1:04:34
I do have a five minute timer if you want me to grab
Brent Bookwalter 1:04:38
- I think my one takeaway with this conversation of how do we know when hard is too hard, is that, whether it’s physical training, whether it’s mental training, don’t let this be an accident. Don’t let it be the chance. Put invest in it if you have the resources, get yourself a coach, build your team for this. It’s better when it’s done together. Or this discussion, this process of performance, or this pursuit of performance, this journey, I’ve had so much joy and growth and roaring experiences come out of doing that together with a team. So this is, I guess, once again, my call to, like, ask people to build and reconstruct, if needed, their personal support teams. And it doesn’t have to be a paid coach, a nutritionist and biomechanist in every individual area, but the idea being that it’s better when we’re doing it together. It’s better when we do it as a team, and that whether it’s the physiological progression or incorporating some of these mental tools and mental philosophies, it’s not going to happen accidentally. So yeah, let all this interesting, hopefully interesting discussion that we just shut out digest a little bit, and then go to the drawing board with your support team and create an individualized and context specific plan for how you’re going to make sure that your next workouts are not too hard, not too easy, but just right for what you are trying to accomplish and work towards on your journey of performance and progression.
Trevor Connor 1:06:03
Great answer, Julie, you have your thoughts? Yeah,
Julie Young 1:06:06
I do. I mean, I think for me, just the most important thing is understanding the individual, and maybe that’s understanding ourselves, if we’re self coached, and just kind of understanding what drives us. You know, maybe what kind of personality we fall into. Maybe we do fall into that personality that will always tend to want to do more, always go harder, or maybe we’re that personality that kind of needs a little bit of a push. So I think that’s super, super important. Really do appreciate this opportunity to talk about the mental and the physical. I think you know, it’s I do feel like, because we live in this physical world, that training can be so physically focused, but yet I feel least for the athletes I work with, like there’s always we always need to keep reminding ourselves that there is such a huge mental component to your training and to your performance, and you know, also understanding all these factors outside these stressors that can affect how we feel physically. We’re not robots, and we got to give ourselves a break every once in a while. You know, we may not just smash it every day, and sometimes there’s just no reason for it. It’s just because of life and things swirling in life. But yeah, I just think generally, it’s just yeah, understanding the individual and then in terms of getting the most out of workouts is just really connecting those dots and just continuing to remind yourself of why you’re doing things, and, yeah, just all the things we’ve discussed throughout the podcast. So I really appreciate it.
Trevor Connor 1:07:30
So I think for mine, I’m going to go back and pay a little tribute to again, that quote from you, Brent, as I said, it’s one of my favorite quotes, this idea of laying down fine layers over time, I think the most important thing for the listeners to get is don’t go into workouts treating them like there is no tomorrow. There is always a tomorrow. And that might sound defeatist, but no one workout is going to make a noticeable difference in terms of improving your performance, but you go and destroy yourself in one workout, and you’re going to feel that effect for days, if not the week, and it can have a negative impact on your overall training. The biggest gains come from that consistency over time. So you want to execute your work well, but if anything, you want to err on the side of a little too little most of the time versus a little too much, but make sure that you are being consistent. You’re getting that work in every single week. That’s when you’re going to see the improvements, not the go and do a workout where you destroy yourself, and then you can’t do anything hard for another week, and then maybe get in two hard workouts, and then you got to basically take a week off. That’s the recipe to never really improve. Well, guys, thanks a ton. That was a real fun conversation. Brent, always great getting you on the show.
Brent Bookwalter 1:08:59
Thanks for having me pleasure to be back. And yeah, I felt like I could do well to apply some what we just talked about to my own life and activity progression here. So thanks for the inspiration and reminder on the education.
Trevor Connor 1:09:09
Brent, you’re an ex Tour de France athlete. Your hope of not taking it to the streams, I don’t know.
Brent Bookwalter 1:09:19
Yeah, we all have our unique individual and personal challenges. So yeah,
Trevor Connor 1:09:23
I am sure now that you are a dad, you are the best and most attentive dad out there.
Brent Bookwalter 1:09:27
Oh, thanks. We’ll try. We’ll keep that part off the camera here.
Speaker 1 1:09:35
All right, thanks, guys. Yeah, thank you. That
Trevor Connor 1:09:39
was another episode of fast talk. The thoughts and opinions expressed in fast talk are those of the individual subscribe to fast talk wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcast, be sure to leave us a rating and a review. As always, we love your feedback. Tweet us at at fast talk labs. Join the conversation at forums dot fast talk labs.com or learn from our experts at fast talk labs.com for Brett. Buchwalter, MOLLY BREWER, Leonard Zinn, John Howard, Dr Andy Pruitt, Jeff sankoff and Julie Young. I’m Trevor Connor. Thanks for listening. You.
